Saturday, August 29, 2009

Sweet Redemption by Leslie Follmar click here!Two posts in one day? This is a short one. My friend and former co-teacher writes and sings her own music. It is awesome. Take a listen and if you like it, maybe you will think of a purchase. She is also on iTunes. "End of the Road" is my favorite so far.

One week down. It was a good week, probably the best start I have had in a while. Even though I could not get into my room when I wanted to so I could start setting up, and even though the construction at school still is not finished, I think we had a great start.

I am loving the paint color in my room. Thanks to Heather, Craig, Chris, and Jackson for helping me get it painted. Mitch (my boa) is happily settled in, and Gary was only too glad to help load the car with his stuff. Goliath (my little lizard) died towards the end of last year, so we are one pet down in my class. I still have a few things left to move in, like my plants and some window coverings. But overall, it looks great. Every once in a while it catches me by surprise how nice it looks. Behr Fresh Pine and Old Vine look quite nice if I say so myself!

I put dark brown burlap on the bulletin boards, and bought some new borders. Earthy stuff. The result is that the room has a very calming effect, in spite of the red cabinets. Add to that, the music I am using thanks to Quantum Learning over the summer, and we are off to a good start. Now if I could just get my music moved to my school computer so I don't have to bring my laptop every day. I burned a couple CD's with the music I chose to use in my classroom and it won't play or transfer. Hmmm. I burned it as an audio file. This weekend I will try a data file.

Gotta give a shout out to a former student teacher of mine, Jim, too for his contribution to the start of the year. Thanks for the awesome rec on software to rip DVD clips to use in PPT presentation for the classroom. I am having way to much fun with it and now need to begin to catalog all the clips I plan to use. Examples: Run Silent, Run Deep the scene when some bolts start to leak or pop because the sub has gone too deep. Red October, the scene where they are looking for the Russian sub and the audio guy reports that he hears singing???, many clips from Apollo 13, clips from Harry Potter with Hermione politely waving her hand in class and Seamus blowing himself up for class procedues and lab safety. The list goes on and on.

I also managed to stay yesterday afternoon and get all the spiral notebooks graded so I did not have to drag them home. They would have just visited here and would have never been productive if I had done that. So I am pleased that I got some grading done in a timely manner for a change. That is probably my biggest downfall. I put grading papers up there with folding laundry and cleaning the house. An evil necessity.

So, I sit here happily blogging away, while the wash machine sits idle. I guess I had better get it going. Maybe we can do something fun tomorrow!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Tomorrow is the first day of school, my 46th over all! Thirteen for grade K through 12, five in college, and twenty eight in teaching. As always, I am nowhere near ready, but as ready as I can be. Kind of like having a baby. It happens no matter how much more time you think you need. It finally just gets here.

I spent all day yesterday (yes Saturday) in my room, 8AM to 4PM, trying to get things in some order. We had rooms reassigned at the end of last year. The room I was assigned to was left a huge mess, so I had to clean that before I could even move my stuff in. We had renovations over the summer, so we could not unpack stuff until renovations were done. Any guesses when that was??? Yes - Monday of this week! So in the middle of all the inservice week meetings, we have scattered hours here and there to get settled in. Fortunately, the work is still not done, although done in the classrooms, so the building was open. There were way too many teachers there for a Saturday, but it was nice to know I was not the only one behind the 8-ball.

Took Chris and 3 buddies to Comedy Sportz for his birthday last night. They had a blast! Getting ready to get breakfast ready for them this morning.

So I enjoy the last official day of vacation doing a mountain of laundry and maybe watching a movie. Also messing with a first day PPT and a lab safety PPT. Got some new software to download video clips from DVD's we own. Make things a little more fun for me and my kids. And then it begins again, another year, year forty six. And I am still loving it!

Monday, August 10, 2009

We came back from China on a Sunday. Monday Craig left for Abilene, Gary left for work as usual and Chris and I started back to school. I missed all of the inservice week - darn it! Just started the first day with the kids. At least jumping back into school helped the jet lag issue resolve a bit quicker.

I have one week of vacation left - sort of. I have a district DC meeting tomorrow, and a meeting at school Wed for a couple hours. But Monday our inservice starts. I start year twenty eight! I am eligible to retire this year, but won't. I still have lots of work to do.

In the past year we lost Abbey, daddy, and Duke. But we welcomed Rowdy. Life goes on. Different, but it goes on. Put one foot in front of the other and take a step. Then do it again. And again. And again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

A friend of mine shared this video with me, ercently. I have been a recipient of an e-mail with the text of this many times, but had never seen the video. I will make a point to watch it often. I like it! He says what I often think. I like his other stuff too. Check him out.

I have yet to get the whole house cleaned on one day this summer. I guess today is that day. Better get to work. Have a great day all!